1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a system for reporting status of and offering service to an image communication terminal, and particularly relates to such a system which can report statuses of an image communication terminal to a manager via a service center and can offer various services from the service center to the image communication terminal. The image communication terminal may be a photocopier, a facsimile device, a printing device or a complex device having information communication means via a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Occasionally, an image communication terminal such as a photocopier, a facsimile device, a printing device and a complex device requires maintenance and replenishment of consumables. When there is a failure of one or more of the resources of the image communication terminal or there is a shortage of consumables such as toner, the user of the image communication terminal calls the service center to ask for maintenance by a service-person or for replenishment of the consumables.
Japanese laid-open patent application No. 2-51968 discloses a system for dealing with a case of shortage of the consumables such as toner. The user registers consumables under his possession into a list of consumables and when there is a shortage of the listed consumables, the user reports the registered list of consumables and information related to his terminal (e.g., telephone number) to the service center through facsimile communication so as to request for replenishment of the consumables from the service center.
Japanese laid-open patent application No. 7-170357 (Japanese patent No. 2744768) discloses a system for requesting maintenance by a service-person. When maintenance by a service-person is required due to an event such as a failure of a particular component of the image communication terminal, details of the failure is reported to the service center by a facsimile transmission.
Recently, there is a device such as an Internet facsimile for communicating documents by e-mails (electronic mails) on the Internet. Japanese laid-open patent application No. 10-207304 discloses a system for requesting replenishment of consumables and maintenance through Internet facsimile communication.
In this system, when a shortage of the consumables is detected, information reporting the shortage status is sent to a preregistered address by an e-mail. If the status of shortage becomes more serious and the consumables are still not replenished, the e-mail is retransmitted with a higher emergency level. When the device recovers from a shortage state, an e-mail reporting this is sent to the preregistered address.
Also, with this system, when a status requiring the service-person is detected, an e-mail is sent to a first address of a plurality of registered service center. If the status is not recovered within a certain period of time, an e-mail is sent to the next address. When the repair is completed, an e-mail reporting the completion of the repair is sent.
However, with such image communication terminal of the related art in which replenishment of the consumables and maintenance of the resource is reported, a replenishment request or a service-person call is made directly to the service center and not via a manager (person-in-charge of management of the company) managing the image communication terminal. Therefore, even if there are consumables stocked by the manager, the consumables may be delivered to the user of the image communication terminal from the service center without the manager knowing it, or, the service-person may visit the user for maintenance of the image communication terminal without the manager knowing it.